Naruto's unfairly unexpected afterlife adventure
by bor902
Summary: You know, after considering the life that he'd lived, Naruto shouldn't have expected his death to be anything but an extraordinarily complicated affair as well. Or, Naruto is surprised to find himself remembering the entirety of his last life when he is born again in the world of Remnant.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Pyrrha Nikos left her locker as the voice of the commentator started her introduction, and when she passed through the tunnel, exciting into the blinding light of a hot Mistralian day, the arena exploded in a cacophony of noise that most would consider to be a glorious reception. Not Pyrrha though, she'd long grown sick of it.

The commentator finished his introduction by making a joke about her not needing luck or something, once again repeating her title of 'invincible girl', and referred to her as the presumable winner of the tournament all in one breath, before he went over to introducing her final opponent of the day.

"And the young man who seeks to dethrone the three-times reigning champion of this grand event, Naruto Uzumaki!" The words bellowed out of the speakers, an absolutely 'hilarious' quip coming out a second later in a slightly sardonic tone of voice. "Let's cheer for him to not lose too quickly."

Pyrrha almost winced as she ascended the steps to the square arena on which she would once again battle. A slight feeling of happiness managed to bubble up inside of her as she noticed that her blonde opponent did not seem perturbed by the announcer's callous bias, before the calm of battle settled over her mind, a neutral anticipation beginning to build up deep inside of her.

She was slightly disappointed to see that the blonde teen was apparently not taking the battle completely seriously, seeing as he was dressed in normal street clothing and didn't appear to be armed. But he'd managed to get here somehow, apparently as a complete upset, so he must have something up his non-existent sleeves. Pyrrha was still dubious of his choice to wear flip flops into battle however.

"Let's have a good match!" He had a friendly voice though, she noted, as she gave him her patented champion smile.

"Let's." She replied, watching out of the corner of her eye as his aura bar went up, and up, and up. She raised an eyebrow. That was almost four times the time it had taken to fill up hers! A small shake went through her body, travelling from her head to her toes as her anticipation turned from neutral, into slightly more feral.

She had no time to dawdle on her emotion state however, as the gong signalling the start of the match resounded loudly, and her first action in the match became a frantic dodge backwards too dodge a whip like kick aimed at where her face had not been a millisecond before.

She skidded to a stop after several flips to stabilize herself after the, she admitted, rather ungraceful jump backwards, and eyed her opponent with newfound respect. For someone younger than her by almost a year, having a physique on her level, or maybe even higher, was an impressive feat. What else was he capable of? Pyrrha asked herself as she mecha-shifted her spear into its rifle form to take a few shots at the blonde.

A lot apparently, she filed away as the blonde started deftly dodging everything coming his way, while also advancing upon her position. She started retreating, firing all the while, giving herself more time to analyse his movements as he got closer and closer.

Once he'd gotten close enough that it became futile to continue shooting, he had dodged everything up to this point anyway, she transformed her rifle into a sword and drew her shield. She could have started curving the bullets with her semblance to hit him, but she didn't want to show her hand too early. Although... he might have already known about her semblance, considering he was fighting her unarmed.

No time. He was upon her. Blocking a punch with her shield caused her arm to go numb, damn he hit hard, she leaned backwards to avoid a slippered foot making a too close acquaintance with her face, and lashed out with her sword. A blow that he avoided. Pyrrha was suddenly distracted by a leather sandal flying towards her face. A distraction. She angled the sharp side of her blade towards his knee approaching from below, only to feel the sandal painfully impacting, and driving itself into her face due to the punch driving it.

The bastard had punched her through the blind spot that his thrown footwear had created. She couldn't remember the last time she'd been in such an interesting fight.

If this had been an unarmed tournament, this guy, no, Naruto, would have her beaten hands down.

But the simple fact of the matter was that she had weapons, while he did not. It was time to start abusing that fact. He hadn't bothered following up on his successful punch, instead deciding to just stand there, barefooted. Her green eyes locked with his blue ones.

This time it was she who initiated the melee. Running at him she pulled him into a dance of blades, deflecting any retaliation with her shield. The range advantage of weapons was not to be disregarded, and the fact that he had even attempted to do so revealed him to be either arrogant, or a fool. She slowly started chipping away at his aura, receiving miniscule damage to her own. That was when she noticed something falling towards her from the sky. The moment it took her to identify the object as another sandal, he used to jump upwards parallel to the ground and start a devastating kick towards her head. Pulling up her shield just in time, she watched horrified as he hooked his foot into the straps of her shield, blasting out a blast of cerulean blue aura out of his heel, to pull the shield out of position. Naruto used the momentum given to him by the aura blast to spin his still mid-air body and kick out at her with his free leg.

Pyrrha tried to use his positioning against him by stabbing at his body, but he was too fast.

If she hadn't had aura he would have crashed her head like a ripe watermelon, of that she was sure. Those were the thoughts running through her mind as she stared at the bright blue sky from her position sprawled out on the ground, where she'd landed after bouncing off said ground at least six times.

As the shock of what had just happened began to fade and feeling returned to her body, Pyrrha realized two things. One, the bastard had broken her jaw through her aura. Two, there was no chance in hell she was winning this fight without revealing her semblance.

She managed to stand up on shaky legs, noticing that she had lost her sword somewhere. Her aura in the yellow, the crowd silent and her head throbbing from a probable concussion, Pyrrha watched her opponent just standing there, menacingly. Watching her with a blank expression on her face.

Well, with only one tenth of his aura depleted, in comparison to the two thirds that she'd lost, he had every right to be arrogant.

Seeing her sword lying on the ground behind him she threw her shield, that managed to stay attached to her arm by the simple virtue of being tied to it, at him, and summoned her sword towards her at the same time. Changing it into a rifle as soon as it reached her hand she started taking shots at him. This time, curving them with the help of her semblance.

Thankfully she'd trained her magnetism extensively enough that she needn't bother worrying about wasting her aura. She'd grown as efficient in using her spiritual as she was in using her body.

So started a game of cat and mouse. Naruto having to dodge the bullets flying at him from almost every direction, while occasionally also having to dodge a shield seeking to bruise his body beyond recognition.

Pyrrha found herself grinning. The fight was exhilarating, standing against a superior enemy, only her wits, semblance and training standing between her and getting absolutely crushed. The pleasurable haze she found herself sinking into was incomparable to any other emotions a fight in the arena had ever elicited. But her instincts remained sharp and thus she was able to immediately notice when Naruto once against incorporated another goal into his dodging, namely getting close to one of the sandals lying on the ground not far from her, and by extension, getting close to her.

She watched confused as he, still dodging the literal hail of bullets flying his way, made his way to his errant footwear, and bent down to pick it up. Pyrrha had expected this, as odd as it was, and thus she'd manoeuvred her shield so it would be flying on a trajectory towards his head when he got close. It was so close to hitting him, only for him to suddenly spin around and bite her shield. Bite her shield! It skidded and spun to a stop within his mouth, and Pyrrha wondered how no teeth had been sent flying.

She focused her magnetism almost entirely on the shield, keeping Naruto in position as she aimed carefully with her rifle, ready to unload the entire cartridge into his smug, biting, smiling face while he couldn't move.

Her rifle clicked, signalling that it was empty.

'Crap.' The single word resounded in her mind as Naruto gripped the shield and unclenched his teeth in her moment of distraction, raised it into the air, arms shaking from exertion and drove it into the stone arena, burying it more than halfway into the ground they were fighting on.

She knew it was futile, but she still felt the need to try to remove her shield from the ground with her semblance. It didn't budge.

Naruto started running towards her.

Pyrrha shifted her rifle back into a sword.

She knew she'd lost, but at least she was going to go down fighting.

They exchanged blows for a bit. Pyrrha was losing the exchange. He simply wasn't as fatigued as she was, apparently.

The end came not with a bang, but with a whimper.

As she managed to deflect a kick with her sword, one of his fists drove itself into the armour covering her stomach, denting it inwards.

rhVs Pyr

Pyrrha clutched herself bending forwards, and after a moment of struggle fell on her knees.

"Surrender?" Naruto asked jovially.

But through the urge to wretch, and the world attempting to throw her off into space, Pyrrha managed to croak out a quiet, "no." through her broken jaw.

The last thing she saw was an elbow approaching her head, the impact to her temple knocking her out.


	2. Chapter 2

**Well this blew up much further than I'd expected. It was only meant to be a one-shot, the entire thing being something that I wrote out three years ago while bored at school, but the love it got me convinced me to continue the story. What can I say, I'm a review-whore at heart.**

**If you like my writing be sure to check out my original story "Living a Long Life as a Legend" on Royalroad/Scribblehub.**

**Chapter 2**

* * *

Pyrrha's awakening was unpleasant. Physically that was. While her jaw throbbed, her body ached, and her head, spreading from her left temple outwards, felt like it was having nails driven into it, she felt quite alright mentally. Happy even.

Not that she'd lost, no. While her losing would draw likely positive consequences behind it, she did not actually enjoy the act of losing. She would have hardly became the three-time champion of the Mistral tournament otherwise.

No, Pyrrha was happy for another reason. She was happy to have been shown that she had not indeed reached the peak of her age bracket as she'd started to suspect within recent years. Strongest in her generation sounded like a nice title, but it left one supremely unchallenged. Ironic really, to become the best fighter, one had to enjoy fighting, or one wouldn't have done so, to then reach the peak, and find that there was nobody left to fight. Nobody capable of giving them a battle worth enjoying beyond the simple pleasure of 'yay, another victory...'. It was, not depressing, but highly bothersome. The alienation that one also experienced from being the best was simply pouring salt on the would.

Thankfully her destiny had other things in store for her, having climbed a mountain under stormy skies, she had jubilated for a short time at her achievement, and right as she was becoming bored, and wondering how to get off that mountain. The sky had cleared, dazzling her with its blue radiance, sun warming her skin, and showing her that what she had thought a mountain, was indeed a hill, and that before her stood a monstrosity of which she could not even see the peak of.

Not a mountain, no. It was a tower, for it was man-made. A tower that she imagined would continue to build up on itself as she attempted to scale it, so she may savour the view from above.

It would take time however, she remembered the beat-down, and she couldn't call it anything but, that she'd been subjected too.

It would take time and effort, blood and sweat, tears and willpower.

She was quite looking forward to it.

Only Naruto bothered her. Would he experience the same difficulties being the strongest that she had? She hoped not, but Pyrrha feared that it was unavoidable. If it came to be so, she would commiserate, and make an exception of attempting to befriend an obstacle on her path. She had certainly wished often enough that someone standing below her would do her the same favour.

-/-

Naruto loudly burped and leaned back on his stool, having just finished his victory ramen. A small part of his mind chastised him for rewarding himself for a fight that was a foregone conclusion. He'd basically just beat on this world's equivalent of a genin after all. That part was quickly shut down by all other sub-minds that made up the entity known under the name Naruto Uzumaki.

They were an adult now, thus not being able to justify eating ramen for every meal like they had as a child. Only special occasions permitted consuming the unhealthy food now. If that particular tactic stretched out the definition of special occasions beyond the purely comprehensible then so be it.

"Man Ren, if you were a girl I'd marry you." Naruto said to his... ward, as he stumbled away from the counter top of the kitchen to the living room of the small apartment the party of three had rented in Mistral's capital city. Once there, he promptly plopped onto the garishly orange couch and spread himself all over it, taking up as much space as possible.

"I will keep your words in mind in case I ever come under the effect of a semblance that would cause me to undergo a permanent gender reversal." Ren replied stoically, taking the three bowls Naruto had just eaten and giving them a quick wash by hand before putting them on the drying rack.

"Where is Nora by the way?" Naruto asked. "I know that she wouldn't miss the fight for the world, so she must have watched it on the television, and I came back fairly quickly after receiving the prize money. She must have run off just as the broadcast finished." He concluded, having determined the how, but still uncertain about the why.

"She said something about the fight inspiring her to go out and fan her flames of youth." Ren said dryly, giving him a flat stare as he untied his apron and went to sit on one of the living room's armchairs.

"Hehehe." Naruto laughed awkwardly, not having needed the reproach. He'd long since started regretting ever introducing the excitable carrot-top to the concept of the flames of youth. Ren didn't need to rub it in.

"The fight was impressive. I would have probably joined her in her rather sudden training expedition, if a certain someone hadn't already beaten all energy out of me as preparation for the match." Ren eventually said once the silence had stretched out for too long.

"You think it will be enough?" Naruto asked, serious for once.

Ren closed his eyes and seemed to consider it. "At least one of the four academies is going to have accept your application, you made beating the 'invincible girl' look contemptuously easy. Which to be fair might also be a point against you. You didn't look like you took the fight seriously enough, which knowing Atlas, might be enough to disqualify you from their considerations."

"It will however work towards Shade accepting to host my exam. They like their huntsmen having style." Naruto shot back.

Ren cracked a grin. "I imagine. While I'm not usually one to say so, I must admit, that beating the three-time winner of such a prestigious tournament wearing orange khakis, a sleeveless shirt, and sandals, which you used as an improvisational weapon, could indeed be classified as very 'hip' and 'cool'."

Naruto dramatically retched at Ren's vocabulary, before a ping from his scroll interrupted his theatrics. He fetched it from the coffee table, an odd accessory considering nobody in the trio actually drank coffee, and opened the device.

"It's from Beacon." He muttered before starting to read the text out loud. "Blaah blah, we at Beacon Academy, bla, bla, bla, happy to host your test for a Huntsman license, bla bla, test will include, bla bla, please bring a weapon, unless you are confident in passing with simply your sandals. Is that an insult?. Bla bla, required forms, bla, duties of a Huntsman include, bla bla, privileges, blalalalalalallalalala." Naruto read aloud, deciding to skip the uninteresting bits, which caused his tongue to go a bit out of control at the end there.

Ren sighed, stood up, walked over to him, and snatched the scroll out of his hand. Taking a few minutes to read through the message he eventually looked up at Naruto with a smile. "It's good, they will host your test at your earliest convenience. They've included the material that will come up, the costs, and basically everything else."

Naruto imperiously pointed a finger at Ren. "Reading that thing gave me flashbacks of having to fill out paperwork. You, take care of it. Just tell me where I need to be, what books I need to bring, and whose ass I have to kick once you've sorted it out."

Ren rolled his eyes but nodded. "I seriously hope being your actual huntsman apprentice won't worsen your delegation tactics."

Naruto raised an eyebrow at him. "Not considering the possibility of me failing the exam?" He asked cheekily, at which Ren simply shook his head.

"Hmm, it's good that you comprehend your sensei's greatness." Naruto said, puffing out his chest, and then clutching his too full stomach which began to hurt as he did so.

"A great man of many talents." Ren grumbled as he watched his teacher run to the toilet with a green face.


End file.
